The Bloodhound Project
Andy Green

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Andy Green

Driver

Day Job

Andy has ‘the World’s Best day job’ as a Fighter Pilot in the Royal Air Force. He flew the F4 Phantom in Germany at the end of the Cold War, and the Tornado F3 on operations including the Balkans and the Middle East. He’s currently working in the Royal Air Force Headquarters, supporting operations around the globe, and wishing he was still flying....

Holiday Job

Andy also has ‘the World’s Best holiday job’, working as part of a Land Speed Record team. In 1997 he was the driver for the Thrust SSC team, as they set the current World Record of 763 mph, still the world’s first and only supersonic Record. In 2006 he drove a pair of JCB digger engines in close formation, in the JCB DIESELMAX, to a diesel world record of 350 mph. He’s now working with Project BLOODHOUND to make another great statement about world-class British engineering, and aiming to inspire the next generation of young scientists and engineers, as the team builds the world’s first 1000 mph car.

Other Interests

Chairman of the Royal Air Force Cresta team, Yachtmaster, aerobatic pilot (sadly, my flying is only at weekends now, and at my own expense), Harley rider, skydiver – the usual stuff to keep me entertained when I’m not at work or involved with a record car.

I have the best wife in the world. Emma is an eye specialist and is fully supportive of all the unusual things I get up to in my spare time. When we met in 2007 she had never even heard of the World Land Speed Record. That’s changed!

Blogs

After months of waiting, lots of great things have come together all at once. The final design of the Car, the move into our new HQ, the confirmation of our run location and the new animation video – which is fantastic!

Hurray – it works! After several months of problems (this is what ‘Engineering Adventure’ actually means when you’re developing new technology), we finally achieved our first firing of the full-size hybrid rocket. It was worth the wait – everything worked perfectly.

The recent news about the ‘coke bottle bombers’ highlights a slightly scary fact about rockets. The bombers’ plan for blowing up several airliners (and the reason that we can’t take drinks through airport security any more) was to use concentrated hydrogen peroxide (known as high test peroxide,

BLOODHOUND circulates a weekly update of activities around the team, so that we can all keep up to speed with this fast-moving programme. In one of July’s updates, Dr Ben Evans described progress in shaping the Car as ‘exciting stuff’. Imagine being the first person in the world to develop a shape that will accelerate from 0 to 1000 mph in less than 50 seconds, and stay on the ground throughout (I’m very keen on this bit) – I’d call that ‘exciting stuff’ too! We’re also working hard to keep everyone on the outside up-to-date with the story as it unfolds. See The Story so far

This diary is my own look at the BLOODHOUND Programme as we try to build the world’s first 1000 mph Car – and, even more ambitiously, as we try to inspire a national interest in science in engineering. It’s a huge task, but worth the effort. If we want to live in a high technology low-carbon world in the near future, then someone is going to have to build it for us, and that someone needs to be inspired now.